Maguire’s solution to the dilemma was to defer learning details of the allegations against Butler until after the show. “I’d much rather not know now. I think once in I’ll be in the zone. I’ll read about it when I get home. I’ll be upset.” On ‘Month of May’, the scuzzy, angsty brother of a double-a side to ‘The Suburbs’, Win Butler sings: “2009, 2010, wanna make a record how I felt then”. The characters in the film actually interact with these lyrics, a crowd of boisterous friends, yelling them to each other. When the film was released, this was how I felt then. I was the screaming teenager, along with thousands of others, not yet aware just how splintered our own crowd would become in just a few years. In the 3Arena the show’s opening act, the Canadian singer Feist, made no mention of the allegations during her performance. She displayed a poster on her merchandise stall pledging to donate the proceeds from her sales to Women’s Aid, an Irish charity that helps victims of domestic abuse. Her publicist did not return a request for comment. Minimising banter, he launched into the band’s classic hit, Wake Up, and delivered an energetic set with Chassagne and the rest of the band, mixing old hits and new songs.

Maguire’s companion, JD Carey, 18, came in solidarity with her friend but felt queasy. “It’s horrible for the victims to see fans still supporting the band.” Others were unaware of the allegations and, when told, shrugged them off. “No offence to the male species but a man’s a man,” said one woman in her 30s. “I’m just here for the music.” A show so incendiary it has its own Reddit thread. By this time the band had amassed two albums’ worth of euphoric singalongs and this legendary set established them as a force with serious longevity. Glastonbury, 2014 But what was behind the sudden increase of budget? Well, it’s because I knew that at the earliest opportunity I’d head to the merch stand and instantly halve my weekend cash to “invest” in an Arcade Fire T-shirt. They were headlining the Saturday night and had just released the best album that I had ever heard.Kardashian krew members Kendall and Kylie Jenner released T-shirts of themselves superimposed over icons such as Ozzy Osbourne, so Arcade Fire sold T-shirts with the ‘Everything Now’ logo superimposed over the Jenners. Talk about kourting kontroversy. Win ended a particularly frenzied performance by smashing his guitar into a camera, reportedly annoyed that the band was forced to share a green room with otherguests. Keep the car running – taxi for Butler! What happens: Desert landscapes! Win Butler in the aforementioned cowboy hat! Régine Chassagne mercilessly beating up a piano! We’ve seen everything now. An enormous papier-mâché bobblehead of band member Richard Parry was stolen in Connecticut and the group pleaded for its safe return. Getting surreal with cereal

Why it’s great: It literally sounds like ‘The Winner Takes It All’ by ABBA. With an interlude that goes a bit Avicii, it’s a barmy and bizarre pop masterclass. Win Takes It All? What happens: A glitzy mirrored coffin, that’s what! In addition, the band shine a torch on a man made of mirrors and drive a 4x4with a mirrorball on the windscreen. The song’s called ‘Reflektor’, geddit? JD Carey, left, and Rón Maguire, queue for Arcade Fire’s concert at 3Arena in Dublin. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian Butler said the relationships were consensual: “It is deeply revisionist, and frankly just wrong, for anyone to suggest otherwise.” The circling BMXs, stucco cul-de-sacs and intimidating federal forces from E.T; the water plant, resting in the horizon like Devil’s Tower from Close Encounters; the street-level, frenetic glimpses of violence from War of the Worlds; the splintered family dynamics of Pretty Much Every Steven Spielberg Film. There’s a lot of hat-tipping (or is that fedora tipping?) to the great director, crammed into the film’s nimble 29 minutes.

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The band left the stage to a clip of Ben E King’s Stand By Me, another possible allusion to the situation. Taking to the stage to deafening cheers from a near capacity arena, Butler thanked the audience “from the bottom of my heart” for attending. It was the closest he came to alluding to the allegations.

Others conceded unease but said they separated art from the artist. “I’m not justifying anything but different artists have had questionable behaviour in the past and you still listen to the music,” said Silvia D’Angelo, 31, from Italy. Jonze’s film offers some assurance to balance this melancholy, it is less tied to the idea of home and fraternity than some of Spielberg and his suburban imitators. Watching it now, for all its nostalgia, Scenes From the Suburbs, seems more of a reflective piece, not a call to scroll deep into your Facebook profile and feel guilty. It doesn’t pine for those friendships to return, but considerately mourns how they came to be outgrown. Her companion, Steve Dowling, 20, had no doubts about attending. “Until he’s proven guilty it’s just allegations.”

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